Editorial: Social networking good for dating

College students have interesting priorities. Apparently we put our school work and ultimately… College students have interesting priorities. Apparently we put our school work and ultimately our career ambitions before our quest for the perfect mate. At least, that’s the premise behind a new dating website for college students.

A business student at Columbia University developed DatemySchool.com to eliminate the need to have an offline social life in order to find a significant other. Students can simply take a small break from the research papers they are writing to log on and find their own special someones. The site recently received $500,000 from private investors, according to The New York Times.

Although the service is currently limited to only a few schools, the website is in the process of expanding — though users will require a .edu e-mail address to register, as was required in Facebook’s glory days.

If it makes it here, we anticipate that the website would be well received by the Pitt community based on its popularity at Columbia — the site currently has 7,000 users.

Though it might seem that personal career ambition is destroying romance, we think dating websites don’t actually do much to change the dating game. DatemySchool.com allows its users to restrict their search results based on attributes like religion, body type and major.

Shallow?

Maybe. But don’t we do this offline as well?

Dating websites also help to take fate out of the dating equation. Why wait to bump into your dream date at the laundromat when you can search through many potential candidates from the comfort of your computer chair?

We don’t think the site will see as many members as Facebook, but that’s not really the point. It offers a distinctive service — dating — with the convenient feature of allowing users to search for matches with certain attributes. DatemySchool.com’s strongest chance for success lies in the fact that Facebook doesn’t currently offer this type of advanced search, and the app that used to alert you when your love interest became single was shut down last week. Hey, no one ever said dating wasn’t a little bit creepy — online or offline.

The site also promises to offer an elitist environment through its college e-mail requirement for registration — elitism we’re sure many college students miss from the Facebook days free of friend requests from 15-year-olds who currently attend your old high school. The site also aims to decrease the embarrassment associated with online dating through its many options for privacy and selectivity. According to The New York Times, “users choose which schools and programs can view their online profiles, which remain invisible to others.”

So who cares if we prioritize our education over our future marriage engagements? Good grades are sexy and will bring the boys and girls to the yard. And if/when they don’t, we’ll social-network-date each other ’til death do us part.